Marquette University e-Publications@Marquette Dissertations (2009 -) Dissertations, Theses, and Professional Projects Performing the Audience: Constructing Playgoing in Early Modern Drama Eric Dunnum Marquette University Recommended Citation Dunnum, Eric, "Performing the Audience: Constructing Playgoing in Early Modern Drama" (2011). Dissertations (2009 -). Paper 107. http://epublications.marquette.edu/dissertations_mu/107 PERFORMING THE AUDIENCE: CONSTRUCTING PLAYGOING IN EARLY MODERN DRAMA by Eric Dunnum, B.A., M.A. A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School, Marquette University, in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Milwaukee, Wisconsin May 2011 ABSTRACT PERFORMING THE AUDINECE: CONSTRUCTING PLAYGOING IN EARLY MODERN DRAMA Eric Dunnum Marquette University, 2011 This dissertation argues that early modern playwrights used metadrama to construct the experience and concept of playgoing for their audiences. By staging playgoing in front of playgoers, playwrights sought to teach their audiences how to attend a play and how to react to a performance. This type of instruction was possible, and perhaps necessary, because in early modern London attending a professionally produced play with thousands of other playgoers was a genuinely new cultural activity, so no established tradition of playgoing existed. Thus, playwrights throughout the era from John Lyly to Richard Brome attempted to invent playgoing through their performances. The first chapter argues that this construction of playgoing was heavily influenced by the politics and economics of the London playhouses. Throughout the early modern era, London magistrates and puritan antitheatrical writers viewed performances as producing the immoral, unruly and often riotous actions of the audiences. And they used these reactions to performances as an excuse to close the playhouses and punish the playwrights. In order to keep the playhouses open and their livelihoods intact, playwrights had to keep their audiences from reacting to drama. Each subsequent chapter traces a method playwrights employed to limit audience reaction. The second chapter demonstrates that playwrights tried to limit the effect performances had on their audiences by dramatizing playgoers who were not affected by drama, thereby discouraging audiences from seeing themselves as the object of performance. The third chapter shows how playwrights often satirized playgoers who reacted to performances in order to stigmatize audience reaction. The final two chapters challenge the commonly held critical opinion that playwrights were working within a humanist interpretive tradition, which linked reading, imitation and praxis. Instead, I suggest that playwrights attempted to keep audiences from actively interpreting their performances in order to limit audience reaction. The study concludes by comparing Hamlet with The Duchess of Malfi and argues that Webster’s play (and not as commonly thought Hamlet ) is a representative and comprehensive example of the early modern construction of playgoing. i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Eric Dunnum, B.A., M.A. Like many early modern plays, this text is a collaborative effort, even though it is only attributed to one person. I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge those who made key contributions, while also acknowledging that there are many who will remain unacknowledged. Though I fully acknowledge the many hands that went into this text, any faults that it contains are, of course, my own. Without my dissertation committee, this project would never have been completed, but they did more than enable the text; their contributions made it better, and their patience and support, made the process much easier than it could have been. Stephen Karian offered a broad and insightful perspective on drama and metadrama that helped combat my often myopic view. He also inspired an interest in the history of the book; a subject that, through many twists and turns, made its way into this text. John Curran’s infectious enthusiasm for non-Shakespearean early modern drama helped me decide on this topic, and his encyclopedic knowledge of drama helped turn the topic into a project. I’m particularly grateful for his early suggestion that The Roman Actor would be a key text for my argument. I have no doubt this uncanny insight, along with others, saved me a lot of time. More than anyone, Amelia Zurcher deserves credit for any value this dissertation has. From its inception as a ten page paper midterm paper for her class on early modern drama and violence through its completion, she had a hand in every aspect of its production. Her willingness to read anything I wrote – early (and very rough) drafts of chapters, conference papers, fellowship applications and even acknowledgement pages – truly went above and beyond what is expected of a dissertation director. Her commentary on these drafts was without exception thoughtful, insightful and challenging without being burdensome or heavy handed. In fact, she was always willing to help me explore an argument or line of thought even when she personally disagreed with it. This openness to new ideas is, I believe, the mark of a true intellectual, and she has provided me with an exceptional example of this trait, for which I am also grateful. Outside of my committee, there have been numerous professional academics who contributed to this project. M.C. Bodden and Albert Rivero saw an early prospectus of this argument, and asked some very suggestive questions, questions that I spent several years trying to answer. I would also like to acknowledge my thesis advisor Douglas Hayes; without his support and encouragement, I’m sure I never would have pursued this degree. Generous fellowships from the Smith family and the Marquette English Department allowed me time off from teaching and working to focus on this project and enabled me to research early editions of plays and commonplace books at the Huntington and Newberry Library. Many thanks to Brandon Chitwood and Buddy Storm, the other two legs of the tripod, for their ability to make a night out feel productive. Their friendship and support made this process rewarding, tolerable and infinitely more fun. I would also like to thank Bertram and Rigby, who always seemed to know when I needed a break. ii Of course, without my parents, Ron and Anita, none of this would be possible. I can’t thank them enough for teaching me the importance of education, a lesson I often tried hard not to learn, but in the end learned (perhaps too) well. My deepest thanks go to my wife Michelle. Her support throughout this process has been absolute. To make sure this project was completed, she sacrificed more than I am willing to acknowledge here. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………....i INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………...1 CHAPTER I. The Social Formation of Playgoing and Its Absent Cause………………........11 II. Performance’s Response to Audience: The Relationship between Audience, Performance and Reality ………………………………...………………......67 III. Mirrors in the Playhouse: The Praxis of Constructing Playgoing ….….…..101 IV. Unstable Texts, Active Readers; Stable Performances, Non-Reactive Playgoers …………………………………………………………………...140 V. Anti-Mimetic Drama: Performance’s Relationship to Reality and the Playgoer’s Interpretive Agency ……………………………………………195 Coda. Return to Malfi: The Secrecy of Performance and the Consequences of Constructing Playgoing …………………………………………...……239 Notes. …………………………………………………………………………..262 1 Introduction: New, Unruly Playgoers and Metadrama In 2008, I attended a production of Titus Andronicus that was billed as an authentic rendition of the play. The idea was to put on a performance that recreated the experience of attending an early modern production of Shakespeare’s play. To accomplish this goal, the actors did not thoroughly rehearse their parts or memorize their lines, but rather read from scrolls that only contained their lines and the line directly before theirs. The audience was also asked to help contribute to the authenticity of the performance. Before the show began, we were asked by the director to actively participate in the performance by booing the villain, cheering the hero, verbally denouncing bad acting, and in general behaving like rowdy, unruly early modern playgoers. Surprisingly, our role as unruly playgoers was difficult to pull off and our attempt to play that part was perhaps the most uncomfortable aspect of the experience (which is saying a lot given we were watching Titus Andronicus ). It was a small production and most of the audience members knew each other, and the cast and director knew most of the audience. And yet, everybody seemed unwilling to interrupt the performance with catcalls, hisses, or cheers, and any attempt on the part of the audience to do what the director asked felt uncomfortable and forced. So for the most part, we sat silently and watched the production like polite, quiet twenty-first century playgoers. What this attempt at recreating the early modern playgoing experience brought home to me is that attending a play is not a natural activity; playgoing does not exist as a universal idea. It has a history, and different cultures construct playgoing differently. The 2 twenty-first century audience of Titus Andronicus could not easily slip into the role of early modern playgoers because our notion of playgoing was vastly different from the early modern notion. We have been trained through some set